Late Rains Save Atlanta From Record for Drought

Monday

It turns out 2007 will not go down as the driest year on record for the drought-stricken Atlanta area, thanks to showers Sunday that capped four consecutive days of rain.

ATLANTA (AP) — It turns out 2007 will not go down as the driest year on record for the drought-stricken Atlanta area, thanks to showers Sunday that capped four consecutive days of rain.

Meteorologists had said it appeared that this year would have even less rain than in 1954, when only 31.80 inches fell. But the showers continued long enough to raise the 2007 cumulative total to 31.85 inches.

“It stays intact,” Mike Leary, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said of the 1954 record.

More than one-third of the Southeast is in an “exceptional” drought, the worst category. The Atlanta area, with a population of five million, is in the middle of the affected region, which includes most of Tennessee, Alabama, North and South Carolina, as well as parts of Kentucky and Virginia.

A parade of rainstorms that began the week before Christmas first provided hope that Atlanta would escape a record this year. The city got rain on 10 of the last 12 days.

On Saturday morning, the 2007 cumulative rainfall total hit about 30.5 inches, and an overnight soaking was on the way, fed by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.

But on Sunday morning, the weather service said it did not look like enough would fall during the day to match the 1954 level, seeming to guarantee a new record.

By 6:45 p.m., however, more than 1.25 inches had accumulated for the day.

Rainfall is measured at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, just south of the city.

The latest rain had only a small effect on the metropolitan area’s main source of drinking water, Lake Lanier, where the receding water is exposing roads and the foundations of buildings submerged since the reservoir was created in the 1950s.

The water level in the reservoir stood at an all-time low of 1,050.79 feet above sea level on Wednesday, and by 6 a.m. Sunday it had risen only to 1,051.05 feet.

“What’s falling now won’t show up until tomorrow or the next day,” said Rob Holland, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the reservoir.

“Anything that stops the level from falling is a good thing,” Mr. Holland added. “But we’d like to get a whole lot more.”

The lack of rainfall across the region has set off intense fighting among Georgia, Florida and Alabama over the federal government’s management of water in the region.

Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia has asked the federal government to release less water from its reservoirs, like Lanier, but Alabama and Florida are concerned about how that would affect their supplies.

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